Instead, he breathed deeply, and kissed her just above the dark smudge of curls.
“Damn,” he said.
“What is it?” She sounded faintly alarmed. “Do I smell terrible?”
He closed his eyes and breathed. His head was spinning slightly, and he felt giddy with a combination of lust and laughter.
“No. It’s only that I’ve been wondering for more than a year what color your hair is here.” He tugged gently on the curls. “Now here I am face-to-face with it, and I still can’t tell.”
She giggled, the vibration making her belly shake gently under his hand.
“Do you want me to tell you?”
“No, let me be surprised in the morning.” He bent his head to his work, surprised now by the amazing variety of textures, all in such a small space—a smoothness like glass, tickling roughness, a yielding rubberiness, and that sudden slippery slickness, musk and tang and salt together.
After a few moments, he felt her hands come to rest gently on his head, as though in benediction. He hoped the stubble of his beard wasn’t hurting her, but she didn’t seem to mind. A subterranean quiver ran through the warm flesh of her thighs and she made a small sound that made a similar quiver dart through his belly.
“Am I doing it right?” he inquired half jokingly, lifting his head.
“Oh, yeah,” she said softly. “You sure are.” Her hands tightened in his hair.
He had started to lower his head again, but jerked it up at this, staring up across the dim white reaches of her body toward the pale oval of her face.
“And just how the hell do you know that?” he asked. His only answer was a deep, gurgling laugh. Then he was beside her, with no real notion how he’d got there, his mouth on her mouth, the length of his body pressed to hers, aware only of the heat of her, burning like fever.
She tasted of him, and he of her, and God help him, he wasn’t going to be able to go slowly.
He did, though. She was eager, but awkward, trying to lift her hips to him, touching him too quickly, too lightly. He took her hands, one at a time, and placed them flat against his chest. Her palms were hot, and his nipples tightened.
“Feel my heart,” he said. His voice sounded thick to his own ears. “Tell me if it stops.”
He hadn’t actually meant to be funny, and was faintly surprised when she gave a nervous laugh. The laugh disappeared as he touched her. Her hands tightened on his chest; then he felt her relax, opening her legs to him.
“I love you,” he murmured. “Oh, Bree, I do love you.”
She didn’t answer, but a hand floated up from the dark and lay along his cheek, gentle as a tendril of seaweed. She kept it there while he took her, laid open in trust, while her other hand held his beating heart.
He felt more drunk than before. Not groggy or sleepy, though; alive to everything. He could smell his own sweat; he could smell hers, smell the faint tang of fear that tinged her desire.
He closed his eyes and breathed. Tightened his grip on her shoulders. Pressed slowly. Slid in. Felt her tear and bit his own lip, hard enough to draw blood.
Her fingernails dug into his chest.
“Go on!” she whispered.
One sharp hard thrust, and he possessed her.
He stayed that way, eyes closed, breathing. Balanced on an edge of pleasure sharp enough to cause him pain. Dimly he wondered if the pain he felt was hers.
“Roger?”
“Ah?”
“Are you…really big, do you think?” Her voice was slightly tremulous.
“Ah…” He groped for remnants of coherence. “About the usual.” A flash of concern penetrated the feelings of drunkenness. “Am I hurting you a lot?”
“N-no, not exactly. Just…can you not move for a minute?”
“A minute, an hour. All my life, if you want.” He thought it would kill him not to move, and would have died gladly.
Her hands moved slowly down his back, touching his buttocks. He shivered and ducked his head, eyes closed, painting her face before his mind’s eye with a dozen small and mindless kisses.
“Okay.” She whispered in his ear, and like an automaton he began to move, as slowly as he could, restrained as he went by the pressure of her hand on his back.
She stiffened very slightly and relaxed, stiffened and relaxed, he knew he was hurting her, did it again, he ought to stop, she lifted up against him, taking him, and there was a deep and bestial noise that he must have made, now, it had to be now, he had to…
Shaking and gasping like a landed fish, he jerked free of her body and lay on her, feeling her breasts crushed against him as he jerked and moaned.
Then he lay still, no longer drunk but wrapped in guilty peace, and felt her arms around him and the warm breath of the whisper in his ear.
“I love you,” she said, her voice husky in the hop-scented air. “Stay with me.”
“All my life,” he said, and wrapped his arms around her.
* * *
They lay peacefully together, welded with the sweat of their efforts, listening to each other breathe. Roger stirred at last, lifting his face from her hair, his limbs at once weightless and heavy as lead.
“All right, love?” he whispered. “Have I hurt you?”
“Yes, but I didn’t mind.” Her hand passed lightly down the length of his back, making him shiver despite the heat. “Was it all right? Did I do it right?” She sounded faintly anxious.
“Oh, God!” He bent his head and kissed her, long and lingering. She tensed a little, but then her mouth relaxed under his.
“It was all right, then?”
“Oh, Jesus!”
“You certainly swear a lot, for a minister’s son,” she said, with a faint note of accusation. “Maybe those old ladies in Inverness were right; you have gone to the devil.”
“Not blasphemy,” he said. He put his forehead against her shoulder, breathing in the deep, ripe scent of her, of them. “Prayers of thanksgiving.”
That made her laugh.
“Oh, it was all right, then,” she said, with an unmistakable note of relief.
He lifted his head.
“Christ, yes,” he said, making her laugh again. “How could you possibly think otherwise?”
“Well, you didn’t say anything. You just lay there like somebody’d hit you over the head; I thought maybe you were disappointed.”
Now it was his turn to laugh, his face half buried in the smooth damps of her neck.
“No,” he said finally, coming up for air. “Behaving as though your spinal column’s been removed is a fair indication of male satisfaction. No very gentleman-like, maybe, but honest.”
“Oh, okay.” She seemed satisfied with that. “The book didn’t say anything about that, but then it wouldn’t; it didn’t bother with what happens afterward.”
“What book is this?” He moved cautiously, their skins separating with a noise like two strips of flypaper being parted. “Sorry about the mess.” He groped for his wadded shirt and handed it to her.
“The Sensuous Man.” She took the shirt and dabbed fastidiously. “There was a lot of stuff about ice cubes and whipped cream that I thought was pretty extreme, but it was good about how to do things like fellatio, and—”